Guardian’s former Gaza correspondent named young journalist of the year in UK awards Malak A Tantesh, 20, ‘showed immense talent and bravery’, said judges at Media Freedom awards in London

Malak Tantesh (right) with family members in northern Gaza. Photograph: Enas Tantesh/The Guardian

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/14/gaza-correspondent-young-journalist-of-the-year-media-freedom-awards

Julian Borger Senior international correspondent

Fri 14 Nov 2025 09.33 EST

The Guardian  

The UK’s Society of Editors has named Malak A Tantesh, the Guardian’s former Gaza correspondent, as young journalist of the year in the national press category at this year’s Media Freedom awards.

The judges said Tantesh “showed immense talent and bravery in some of the hardest conditions ever faced by a journalist, she continued to report while having to forage for food and facing the constant risk of bombing and the threat of targeted killing”.

Tantesh, 20, reported for the Guardian from Gaza for 18 months. She described the impact of the war, losing close relatives and witnessing the aftermath of bombing first hand. She wrote about her family’s return to her birthplace in Beit Lahia, to find their home in ruins and their orchard destroyed. “My memories are crushed and buried,” she wrote.

In October, Tantesh published an article looking back on two years of war, which took the people of Gaza through a “gateway to hell”. There were times, she wrote, when the surviving members of her family envied the dead.

Tantesh and her father Amjed return to the rubble of their home in northern Gaza. Photograph: Enas Tantesh/The Guardian

According to the UN, at least 248 journalists had been killed in Gaza by September, more than in any other conflict in modern times. There have been repeated allegations that Israel was deliberately targeting journalists. Israel has denied the charge, while claiming that some of the journalists its forces killed had been Hamas operatives.

Receiving the award on Wednesday, Tantesh thanked her parents for “raising me to be the person who I am now”.

“They are still there in Gaza, suffering what I was suffering during the past months,” she said, and went on to thank her sister Enas, who worked alongside her as a photographer in Gaza, and her cousin Seham, who has now taken up her position as correspondent. They had stood with her throughout her time working in Gaza, she said.

Tantesh also acknowledged the support of her editors and colleagues at the Guardian and “all the people who have stood with me all the way”.

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, said: “I am thrilled that Malak’s brave, meticulous, moving reporting, delivered under the most awful of circumstances, has been recognised by the judges. A brilliant journalistic future is ahead of her.” 

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/14/gaza-correspondent-young-journalist-of-the-year-media-freedom-awards 

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The Guardian: ‘No water, food, health care, toilet’: Desperation deepens in Gaza’s camps

Tents set up by displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi near the border with Egypt in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Hundreds of new shelters set up near Khan Younis as Palestinians flee fighting in Rafah

Malak A Tantesh in Khan Younis and Jason Burke in Jerusalem

Wed 15 May 2024 00.00 EDT

Last modified on Wed 15 May 2024 02.06 EDT

Soaring above the rows of tents 10 deep on the dunes stretching back from the Mediterranean sea is a reminder of better times in Gaza: a ferris wheel.

Now, the cafes, paths and miniature train of the Asda’a amusement park are obscured by hundreds of shelters, put up by some of the half a million newly displaced people who have made their way to this sandy strip of coastline near the city of Khan Younis to escape fighting in the north and south of the territory.

Massa al-Arbeed, 10, had only just arrived from Gaza City, with her brother and mother.

“We have had to leave a lot behind because this is perhaps the sixth time we have moved,” al-Arbeed told the Guardian. “So I’m just sitting here.

“There are no games or dolls to play with, or even a house to take shelter in, and because we move a lot, I’ve lost touch with all my friends and now I don’t know anything about them.”

Always anxious, sometimes injured or sick, frequently hungry and thirsty, most of the inhabitants of the tented city that has risen among the dunes and scrubby fields are seeking shelter from the relentless Israeli offensive that has reached Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza.

Another hundred thousand have moved from northern Gaza... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/15/no-water-food-health-care-toilet-desperation-deepens-in-gazas-camps 

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